Digia To Spin Off Qt Business Into Its Own Company

[DarkCloud]

You've misunderstood. Qt is all about C++, and also QML (the Javascript like part) is usually used together with C++ in all but the more simpler apps. What is meant is that Qt Widgets is stable, capable and does not need big new features by itself. Qt Core, Qt Gui and other core modules are continued to be heavily developed and their new features will be used also by Qt Widgets wielding apps. And of course nothing prevents bringing new features to Qt Widgets either, but maybe currently all desktop app developers are happy with the state of Qt 5, as many are porting to it now.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

Hi Timo. First thanks for taking the time to reply, and to assure me that Widgets are here for today and tomorrow. I write apps for a living, big desktop apps usually. My apps, well not in the realm of a CAD program with 500K to 1M lines of code, are still much larger then a phone or portable app with two or three screens. I have tried to embrace QML for desktop apps, but feel it is very very imature. For starters it looks bad - at least the Quick controls. They give your app a Java Swing look. There are no themes for QML, every QML piece lays itself out chosing its fonts, colors, margins, sizes - its like trying to take a video like "Girls Gone Wild" and make an epic movie out of it. I wont even talk about the overhead and complexity of passing C++ to/from QML.

The UI is only part of the story of my apps, the bigger picture is how I gather and process the data. I use methods and variables, so the concept of using a state machine like QML is very difficult (for an old school guy like me). Two or three states ok, but when you have 10 or more states, and states within states is all to complicated and hard to maintain for a guy like me.

One thing you asked for about what is missing from Widgets. While Qt widgets are pretty complete there is definetly room for improvment. I don't think this is the forum for such a dicussion. I will instead email you my wish list for improvments.

Thanks again for responding. Maybe in time QML will be the right tool for me.

[TheBlackCat]

With Qt5, there is HW acceleration of GUI only with QML/Javascript because Digia want everyone to use QML instead of C++ Widgets. Gap between QML and Widgets is increasing with every Qt release.

QML/Javascript is a replacement for .ui files, not for C++.

[anda_skoa]

With Qt5, there is HW acceleration of GUI only with QML/Javascript because Digia want everyone to use QML instead of C++ Widgets. Gap between QML and Widgets is increasing with every Qt release.

You are confusing two technologies.
Qt Widgets is a UI component set with an emphasis on standard desktop style interfaces.
QML is a object tree building technology.

As a developer you can combine these, i.e. use QML to build a QtWidget object tree.

Cheers,
_

[anda_skoa]

QtQuick idea isn't bad, but using Javascript is.

A lot of JavaScript usage with QML is only during the rapid development stages of an application.
Not having to be compiled, being reloadable, makes initial iterations a lot faster.

Any component that has been sufficiently finalized can easily be stabilized with a C++ functionality core.

Cheers,
_

[anda_skoa]

QML/Javascript is a replacement for .ui files, not for C++.

Easy to confuse since a lot of people mistakingly equate QML and QtQuick.

Being a replacement for .ui based UI building is actually only one of the use cases. Granted the initial one, but very useful for other things as well.

It is an object tree building technology with the capbilty to describe relations between these objects' values.

Cheers,
_

[JS987]

not really no, not anymore than WPF is targeted at web developers. What people like you don't seem to get is that this is literally the equivalent of WPF for Qt, just using JSON as opposed to XML because it's nicer for people who want to write this stuff by hand. Ultimately the WPF/QtQuick idea is more powerful and easier to do complex things with, than the traditional widget style development workflow. The real problem with QtQuick up until the recently has been that QtQuickControls hadn't been released as stable yet, which made it unsuitable at the time for desktop development.

WPF seems to be better than QtQuick. It doesn't need Javascript and is closer to .ui files. XML isn't bad if you use modern software with code completion.

[CTown]

Hi Timo. First thanks for taking the time to reply, and to assure me that Widgets are here for today and tomorrow. I write apps for a living, big desktop apps usually. My apps, well not in the realm of a CAD program with 500K to 1M lines of code, are still much larger then a phone or portable app with two or three screens. I have tried to embrace QML for desktop apps, but feel it is very very imature. For starters it looks bad - at least the Quick controls. They give your app a Java Swing look. There are no themes for QML, every QML piece lays itself out chosing its fonts, colors, margins, sizes - its like trying to take a video like "Girls Gone Wild" and make an epic movie out of it. I wont even talk about the overhead and complexity of passing C++ to/from QML.

The UI is only part of the story of my apps, the bigger picture is how I gather and process the data. I use methods and variables, so the concept of using a state machine like QML is very difficult (for an old school guy like me). Two or three states ok, but when you have 10 or more states, and states within states is all to complicated and hard to maintain for a guy like me.

One thing you asked for about what is missing from Widgets. While Qt widgets are pretty complete there is definetly room for improvment. I don't think this is the forum for such a dicussion. I will instead email you my wish list for improvments.

Thanks again for responding. Maybe in time QML will be the right tool for me.

That's because QML was originally made for mobiles, but as Luke_Wolf just said, many desktop developers were waiting for QtQuickControls (which officially gives many reusable components meant for desktop usage such as radio buttons). And if it helps, both Oxygen and Breeze (two great but opposite themes) have QML themes now.

I think it's OK that your desktop apps have not been translated to QML at this point. The Qt Widgets module has a long life span ahead of it. Plus, the only big project I can think of that uses QML only is Plasma Workspaces (desktop, window manager, splash screen, screen locker together) where its developers started porting to QML started way before Qt5 came out.

[carewolf]

With Qt5, there is HW acceleration of GUI only with QML/Javascript because Digia want everyone to use QML instead of C++ Widgets. Gap between QML and Widgets is increasing with every Qt release.

You can still use the graphicsscene with a QGLWidget (or QOpenGLWidget in Qt 5.4). There isn't really that much to accelerated in the normal GUI, you need animated transitions before OpenGL makes sense, and those are best done using either the old QGraphics scene graph or the new QQuick. I would still love C++ bindings for QQuick, but you can load qml from C++ so it is not that hard.

[Alliancemd]

Re

With Qt5, there is HW acceleration of GUI only with QML/Javascript because Digia want everyone to use QML instead of C++ Widgets. Gap between QML and Widgets is increasing with every Qt release.

You heard a few words and you think you know everything already... Heard: QML and HW and done, it's only possible with QML...
Go search what QGraphicsScene is, it was available since Qt 4.2! And QPainter which was available since the Qt 3 days...

[Alliancemd]

Re

WPF seems to be better than QtQuick. It doesn't need Javascript and is closer to .ui files. XML isn't bad if you use modern software with code completion.

"XML isn't bad if you use modern software with code completion." - everybody step to the sides, the pro is talking...